Book published this week in UK referring to ME as psychosomatic

[Cheshire]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...nice-to-their-children-neurologist-warns.html

Dr O’Sullivan, a specialist in psychosomatic conditions, said that many people were left with seizures, pain or paralysed because of mental traumas in their past. For example, around a third of psychosomatic seizures are caused by childhood sexual abuse.

But the illnesses can also be triggered by too much love and attention, she warned.

"I think it is a pattern set up in childhood,” she told The Hay Festival. “You can be too nice to your children when they are sick.

“Giving them a lot of attention when they are sick can set up a pattern when they are older. They can think that is how to get help and reassurance.

“So when their job gets a bit shaky, or one of their children is in trouble, or they are worried about raising a mortgage it can manifest as physical symptoms. And they can't escape.”

My bold


If your patients suffered from childhood trauma, are depressed or anxious, the psychosomatic diagnosis can easily be applied.

But if they had non abusive, loving parents, and you can't find any trauma to explain their symptoms, don't worry, we've got a really nice explanation in store for you: use the "too much love" theory. That way you can elegantly diagnose every patient that enters your office.

And you will also join a great, ancient but still vivid current of psychiatry: the "blame the mother" tradition.


Appalling...

 

[Yogi]

She seems to be in breach of the General Medical Council's rules. The charities and ME advocates (who are well enough) should write a strongly worded complaint to the GMC on her conduct.

http://www.gmc-uk.org/guidance/good_medical_practice/maintain_performance.asp

8. You must keep your professional knowledge and skills up to date.

 

[Wayne]

Wow, just read the review--just dumbfounded. I guess for me, it's amazing to witness the depths to which people will stoop in their quest for money and attention. Sounds like some sort of psychological problem to me--but likely much deeper rooted than that.

 

[Eeyore]

I think this is just an example of how arrogant doctors can be. The height of arrogance is the assumption that because you can't understand something, it's not there. i.e. If it were real, you'd be able to understand it, since you are so smart!

The less arrogant doctors are willing to look at a complex illness like ME and say "I don't know!" That is the first step to knowledge - realizing that one doesn't know. Before you can even ask the question of why, you have to first acknowledge what you do not understand.

 

[Kyla]

I think this is just an example of how arrogant doctors can be. The height of arrogance is the assumption that because you can't understand something, it's not there. i.e. If it were real, you'd be able to understand it, since you are so smart!

The less arrogant doctors are willing to look at a complex illness like ME and say "I don't know!" That is the first step to knowledge - realizing that one doesn't know. Before you can even ask the question of why, you have to first acknowledge what you do not understand.

 

[alex3619]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...nice-to-their-children-neurologist-warns.html


My bold


If your patients suffered from childhood trauma, are depressed or anxious, the psychosomatic diagnosis can easily be applied.

But if they had non abusive, loving parents, and you can't find any trauma to explain their symptoms, don't worry, we've got a really nice explanation in store for you: use the "too much love" theory. That way you can elegantly diagnose every patient that enters your office.

And you will also join a great, ancient but still vivid current of psychiatry: the "blame the mother" tradition.


Appalling...

Or in logic, if A you have it. If not A you have it.

This is the Freudian method. Its why in 1922 Karl Popper declared this nonscience. They make this stuff up, and either way you have it. There is no way to falsify any of it, though the falsification theory came later.

Nonscience later became called pseudoscience, though technically they are not quite the same thing.

Pseudoscience practiced by medical professionals is ...... ?

 

[alex3619]

Without doubt you cannot have sound knowledge. Knowledge has to be tested, it all has to be doubted. I love this quote, and its almost a forerunner of pancritical rationalism, the philosophy that to have the best chance at real knowledge you need to question everything (I am over simplifying but that is the gist).

Certainty = dogma.

In my opinion, pan-critical rationalsm is how you can expand the scientific method to cover anything, even art, religion, justice and so on. I hyphenated the first word here, as its just critical rationalism expanded to everything (the pan- prefix).

 

[alex3619]

The less arrogant doctors are willing to look at a complex illness like ME and say "I don't know!" That is the first step to knowledge - realizing that one doesn't know. Before you can even ask the question of why, you have to first acknowledge what you do not understand.

I have been saying this for years. I started writing a book on this kind of irrationality but my cognition has declined badly the last two years.

The simplest thing that can change the world is, in my opinion, the adoption of "I don't know". My book's title is Embracing Uncertainty. When you know you don't know you should treat things with the respect they deserve, whether they be theories or patients.

 

[alex3619]

She seems to be in breach of the General Medical Council's rules. The charities and ME advocates (who are well enough) should write a strongly worded complaint to the GMC on her conduct.

http://www.gmc-uk.org/guidance/good_medical_practice/maintain_performance.asp

8. You must keep your professional knowledge and skills up to date.

This is another one of those double standards and hedging. She is probably up to date by their definition, because up to date often just means as up to date as the majority of the profession.

Its also an impossibility. No doc is up to date. Hence the hedging.

However when researching and writing on a specific topic, in science at least, a considerable familiarity with the evidence is expected.

 

[jimells]

“Giving them a lot of attention when they are sick can set up a pattern when they are older. They can think that is how to get help and reassurance.

How did this person fall out of a Dickens novel? (and how do we stuff her back in...)

 

[Gingergrrl]

If your patients suffered from childhood trauma, are depressed or anxious, the psychosomatic diagnosis can easily be applied.

But if they had non abusive, loving parents, and you can't find any trauma to explain their symptoms, don't worry, we've got a really nice explanation in store for you: use the "too much love" theory. That way you can elegantly diagnose every patient that enters your office.

And you will also join a great, ancient but still vivid current of psychiatry: the "blame the mother" tradition.


Appalling...

@Cheshire This same principle was applied to schizophrenia until it was ultimately blown out of the water and twins separated at birth raised in different households both developed the same illnesses etc.

What happened to me was a series of biological triggers beginning with neurotoxicity to an antibiotic, followed by surgery and severe mono, followed by 2+ years exposure to toxic black mold.

I was as independent as a person could possibly be and fought independently until my body gave out. Her nonsense that I was either earlier abused or attention seeking is pure BS. I want my life, career and independence back. I don't want to be bathed and pushed in a wheelchair.

I doubt that Dr. O'Sullivan would offer to trade places with me and that she lacks the confidence in her own theory to risk the chance of permanent disability that I am now in.

 

[Hell...Hath...No...Fury..]

If your patients suffered from childhood trauma, are depressed or anxious, the psychosomatic diagnosis can easily be applied.

But if they had non abusive, loving parents, and you can't find any trauma to explain their symptoms, don't worry, we've got a really nice explanation in store for you: use the "too much love" theory. That way you can elegantly diagnose every patient that enters your office.
Appalling...

What happens to those who were neither abused nor overly loved? With parents who were so indifferent, that it took one of them 2 years to notice his child was bedridden under his own roof and the other offering to end the life of their child to 'end the suffering' As a favour.

Now surely, if one's illness was all in the mind, then someone offering to put a pillow over your face while you're parslysed because thats a better option than the level of suffering being endured at the time... This would be the time to snap out of it and pull yourself together..... Yet still the parslysis and agony continued... How odd... :thumbdown:

I was first diagnosed with migraine when i was 4. The male GP at the time after receiving the results from the specialist at the hospital actually insinuated to my mother that the migraines were probably caused by sexual abuse at home! While i was sitting there in the room! We changed to a decent doctor after that.

 

[Dr.Patient]

Wow, just read the review--just dumbfounded. I guess for me, it's amazing to witness the depths to which people will stoop in their quest for money and attention. Sounds like some sort of psychological problem to me--but likely much deeper rooted than that.

That's right! Controversy sells. She very likely included ME in this book deliberately.

 

[Sasha]

Whenever I see this 'psychosomatic' view of ME/CFS spewed out these days, the title of this blog pops into my head (don't follow the link if bad language offends you!).

Its tagline is, "Demystifying Bullshit in ME/CFS'.

Says it all in so few words...

 

[Dr.Patient]

What does this moron think about these

1. Sudden onset after a flu, and struck down the next day.

2. Impaired alveolar gas exchange on a CPET.

3. When asked if they want to do anything, how patients say that they want to go out, have fun, travel, spend time with their children, etc.

Why does this dufus not understand that there are some "medical" illnesses that are just as incurable as some "psychosomatic" illnesses- so just dumping such illnesses into a psychiatric box does not relieve her of her inadequacy as a "medical" doctor?

What a bozo!

Wanted to add to this post---

4. Orthostatic hypotension, or POTS--- when your blood pressure goes down, or your heart rate goes up-- Is this also in the "heads" of patients?

 

[Revel]

4. Orthostatic hypotension, or POTS--- when your blood pressure goes down, or your heart rate goes up-- Is this also in the "heads" of patients?

Absolutely, @Dr.Patient!

I went through 4 cardiologists, each one diagnosed me with 'anxiety', 'depression' and 'hypochondria'.

I had to insist on a referral to a syncope consultant in order to get properly diagnosed - 40 years on from initial onset of my POTS symptoms.

 

[Daisymay]

I see that David Aaronovitch and Professor Sir Simon Wessely will be talking at the RCP International Congress in July on "Psychosis and conspiracy":

http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/traininpsychiatry/conferencestraining/internationalcongress2015/programme/thursday2july2015

International Congress of the Royal College of Psychiatrists 29 June - 2 July 2015, Birmingham, UK
Thursday 2 July 2015
9.00 - 9.30 Keynote KN10 Psychosis and conspiracy
Chair: Professor Sir Simon Wessely, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists
Mr David Aaronovitch, Journalist, The Times


David Aaronivitch wrote a book on conspiracy in 2010 called "Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History" :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Voodoo-Histories-Conspiracy-Shaping-History/dp/140016592X

 

[Ellie_Finesse]

Just to add to what you are all talking about, I have just seen this article in The Telegraph.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...nice-to-their-children-neurologist-warns.html

Dr O’Sullivan said it was clear that patients were not inventing their symptoms or malingering, but that serious conditions were being driven by emotional trauma. And, often accepting that the cause was not physical could stop symptoms like seizures, headaches or joint pain immediately.

And......

“In some of its more extreme manifestations it can cause severe psychological distress and can lead to blindness, deafness, muscle spasms. The symptoms can be reproduced psychosomatically have no limit.

“They can happen to anyone and they don’t get better. And a lot of people will experience them in a mild-form. If you accept they are psychological many of them melt away.

I have no words to describe my thoughts on this! :thumbdown:

She says to not pay attention to the side effects when you read the leaflets of your medication as you are likely to start experiencing the conditions psychosomatically. Hmmmm I really want to laugh at that.

I am struggling to understand (and have to say dissapointed) how in the 21st century with science envovling, how some Doctors are living in the dark ages. I really thought we had moved on from that.

 

[Hell...Hath...No...Fury..]

“They can happen to anyone and they don’t get better. And a lot of people will experience them in a mild-form. If you accept they are psychological many of them melt away"

And what about the rest that don't 'melt away?'

Repeat after me everyone...

'I accept that they're psychological.'

'I accept that they're psychological.'

'I accept that they're... oatmeal with brussel sprout coathangers.'

Damn it doesn't seem to melt brain fog

 

[SOC]

“They can happen to anyone and they don’t get better. And a lot of people will experience them in a mild-form. If you accept they are psychological many of them melt away"

I'll bet when she gets the flu or a gastric upset, she doesn't rest or take meds or go to bed. She just accepts HER symptoms are psychological and they just melt away. NOT!

Or is that her symptoms are real and only other people's symptoms that are imaginary?